Venezuela’s Embassy in Mexico Opens Collection Center for Earthquake Victims

ByAlma E. Muñoz and Arturo Sánchez

This article by Alma E. Muñoz and Arturo Sánchez originally appeared in the June 27, 2026 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo expressed her condolences yesterday for the victims of the earthquakes in Venezuela’s north-central region during the first call she held yesterday with Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, to whom she reaffirmed Mexicans’ support for the Venezuelan people.

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan Embassy in Mexico set up a collection center at its premises, located at Schiller 326, colonia Polanco, in Mexico City, to receive donations for those affected by the earthquakes recorded on Wednesday.

The center is operated by the Mexican Coordinator of Solidarity with Venezuela, an organization that, faced with the insistence of Mexican citizens and Venezuelans residing in Mexico to send humanitarian aid, asked the diplomatic mission to open a space to concentrate the support. The embassy provided its facilities for that purpose.

There, personal hygiene products, basic medicines, and non-perishable food are being received in order to channel them to the population that needs them.

Through a message circulated on social media, the embassy stated that “in the face of the beautiful displays of solidarity from the Mexican people and from the Venezuelan men and women who reside in Mexico,” those interested in donating non-perishable supplies must go directly to the headquarters of the diplomatic mission.

It clarified that it “is not coordinating with any organization or government body that requests money or operates as a collection center” outside the indicated headquarters.

The Venezuelan ambassador, Stella Lugo, expressed her government’s gratitude for “the solidarity and support” of President Claudia Sheinbaum and the Mexican government for sending emergency personnel and supplies to the Bolivarian republic.

She also thanked “the displays of solidarity and cooperation expressed by various institutions, organizations, movements, and the Mexican people in general toward the people of Venezuela in these moments of difficulty.”

Regarding the call she held with Rodríguez, Sheinbaum Pardo stated that “Mexico is already deploying humanitarian aid in the affected areas; we are attentive to additional needs,” she said, while the first brigade that arrived in that country —250 soldiers and 18 dogs— began search and rescue operations. Meanwhile, the transfer of 26 nationals and a Vietnamese delegation made up of 12 people is being considered on a return flight.

In difficult times, the president added, “our nation stands in solidarity with brother countries,” and she offered to send all the aid requested of it. “Solidarity always above all else. It is part of the culture that comes to us from the original peoples,” she emphasized.

The brigade is made up of the Yumare grouping and, according to the report given to her by the head of the Secretariat of National Defense, General Ricardo Trevilla Trejo, they have already delivered to the Venezuelan authorities 10.7 tons of medical supplies that were part of the IMSS-Bienestar inventory and 8.4 tons of tools and rescue equipment.

Among them, helmets, knee pads, elbow pads, gloves, and lamps; first-aid kits; electric power generators and motorized cutting equipment, which were transported on three planes.

Sheinbaum Pardo highlighted the readiness of the Army and the Navy in search and rescue operations and said that, in the case of Venezuela, “as they request more, whatever we can give, or if necessary, also call on the citizenry for more widespread support,” noting that in Mexico collection centers have even been opened.

For its part, the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs reported that the staff of the Mexican Embassy in Venezuela managed to establish contact with 73 Mexicans residing or in transit in that country, all of them located in good health and in safe places.

The foreign ministry added that 26 nationals voluntarily expressed their intention to return to Mexico and are waiting to be repatriated on the Mexican Air Force flights participating in the humanitarian assistance airlift.